Thieves mowed down a farmer when he tried to stop them from stealing his sheep in the early hours of Sunday at Shamshabad. Irate villagers managed to catch hold of one of the four accused fleeing in a silver-coloured Toyota Innova and bashed him up before the police took him into custody.
Tension gripped the village as the locals staged a demonstration on the main road criticising the police for delay in reaching the place. They placed boulders on the road and disrupted traffic for almost three hours. The police came three hours after a distress call was made to the Shamshabad police station at about 3.30 a.m., villagers said.
Police said that the victim, Mekala Mallaiah, and his two sons Ramesh and Vijay Kumar woke up on hearing their sheep bleating to find four thieves trying to take some of them away from the adjacent shed by tying the legs.
Killed trying to prevent robbery
The father and sons immediately alerted the other villagers and surrounded the robbers. Mallaiah stood in front of the vehicle to prevent their escape when the accused drove onto him, dragging him for over 100 feet and crushing him under the wheels. He was killed instantaneously.
But, the villagers hurled stones on the windshield forcing the robbers to swerve into a nearby tree. Three of them still managed to escape while one person, identified as Mohammed Hashmath, was caught and soundly thrashed.
Repeated target
Apparently, Mallaiah’s sheep shed was the target of robbers three times earlier. During one such bid to steal the sheep, the victim also fractured his hand when the gang had attacked him, although it was yet to be ascertained if the same gang was involved in the previous attempts.
Tempers ran high when the villagers demanded that the police hand over Hashmath to them. They obstructed the police jeep and even raised slogans against them. In the meantime, Rajendranagar TD MLA T. Prakash Goud visited the spot and gave Rs.25, 000 towards funeral expenses.
‘Compensate the bereaved’
He demanded that the government pay a compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to the bereaved family besides a government job to one of the family members. Home Minister P. Sabita Indra Reddy too visited the village, consoled Mallaiah’s family and said a police outpost would be established in the village to prevent such incidents in future.
The police claimed that the gang hailed from Chandrayangutta and had used a rented vehicle bearing fake registration numbers for the crime. There have been incidents of cattle and sheep being stolen from the nearby villages of Kaveliguda, Ramanjapur and Malkaram for sale to the slaughter houses in the city, police said.
